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Friday, March 29, 2013

One thing I miss about not traveling is not blogging about all the places we have seen. We have continued to be busy over these past few weeks getting the house ready, and on Monday we meet again with our Realtors and hopefully they will be showing the house to a throng of buyers..... So today, and because I know that those who have met them are interested in how they are doing, the main subject of this blog will be Bubba and Skruffy. (In other words...some of you all don't care about how Marcia and Dave are doing, but you gotta know what the dogs are up to.)

The dog day begins the night before where they rest up after a busy day for another busy day. Oh how nice it must be to sleep as they do...especially Bubba who can sleep so soundly that he literally can snore louder than us. There are also the times that he talks in his sleep....or should I say, he makes sounds like a very muffled faint bark or yelp. And then there are the few times in which he has let out a squeal that can awaken the dead...but it does not awaken him. Thank goodness that those are few are far between.

Above Bubba is on the couch and Skruffy is on the chair. Most of the time they are both on the couch together, but on this night Skruffy got on the chair....perhaps she was a bit intimidated by the way Bubba was laying down in the center of the couch (below). Dogs must get a good nights sleep if they are ever to catch that dreaded squirrel.....

The morning starts out with a quick run outside, followed by a quick run back inside and the demand of their daily Arny Treat. If I am lucky, I have our coffee just about ready by the time they come back inside...unless it happens to be one of those rare mornings in which one of them asks to go outside before the crack of dawn. Of course, if one goes, they both go, and then we all lay back down until at least the sun is starting to light up the sky. And for the next few hours, it is a little more sleep, and a lot of looking out the window awaiting the squirrels to arise.

Above Bubba looks out between the curtains, below they both are looking out. It is about 8:45 am.

Above they are both still looking out....it is closer to 9:00 now. Below, Skruffy has given up, it is just after 9:00.

And Bubba (below) is laying down but still looking out...it is about 9:30.

Then someone decides that "dad's" lap looks comfortable....

Many mornings,
the little girl will sit on my lap looking out the window as I finish up
my coffee while I watch “I Love Lucy”and/or “Daniel Boone:on Me-TV, our
favorite over the air TV station.

Then it is the
start of many day tours of the back yard in search of prey....I mean
Squirrels....and of course, a quick hello (BARK BARK BARK) to the
neighboring dogs. These pictures speak for themselves....just remember, that during this time period the squirrel(s) are running along the fence, sitting in the tree, jumping on the utility building, and laughing out loud at the great hunters below.

They went out around 10:00, and came back in a little after noon. They went out again at least 3 more times before dusk...and in between, they do this (below).

By night fall....they are exhausted and after their 10 or 11 pm quick trip outside.....they are back in the reclined position again for the night...dreaming about them pesky, sneaky, no good squirrels that laughed their tails off at the two mighty hunting dogs.

We have much of the house and all of the outside ready to go....since we spend most of our time in the den, bedroom and kitchen areas, those areas will be cleaned up Sunday and Monday in case the Realtors want to take pictures when here on Monday.

Outside view (above) is much like the one shown a few weeks ago...except now you can see the flowers around the mailbox, which you can see better in picture below.

Above is one of the bathrooms. We had the tub and the surrounding tile grout resealed. Below is one of the bedrooms, empty now that Marcia's son John moved out in mid-January.

Below is the other bedroom, which we used as a office room.

Above and below are views of the living room. The two bedrooms and the bathroom shown previously are accessed through that hall entrance, but also through the kitchen which is right behind the display case shown below (you can barely see into the kitchen through the far left of the picture. (In the picture above, just to the left of the chair, you can see Bubba looking at me taking the picture.)

In my spare time, I managed to rent a Rug Doctor and clean the carpets in the motor home and the carpet and upholstery in the car. I started other spring cleaning items in the motor home too. We have a little over a month to get everything ready to leave, and to hopefully find a buyer for this house.... We can't wait to get back on the road again...

Monday, March 18, 2013

Since our last posting, we have finished most of what we needed to do before we put the house up on the market. Some things we have hired out, some things we have done ourselves. Just glad that we are nearly done, and we hope for a good, quick sale. If all goes well, we hope to be on the road again by early May regardless of the house selling or not. This past week there has been a PGA Golf Tournament at Innisbrook, which is about 2 1/2 miles away from where we live. They drew a big crowd, and it seemed to be a successful tournament. As for us....watched a small bit of it on the TV, and watched the MetLife Blimp fly over the golf course from our sliding glass window.

Above you can see the top of the fence and the tree which the squirrels lives in, and below is a close up of the blimp.

The dogs sure love to play with the squirrels. From what I can tell, there are two which have made the tree their home. They will run down the tree, get on the fence, run over and jump onto our small utility building, then vanish into the trees beyond....sometimes running along the back fence to the utility pole. Skruffy runs all over trying to chase them, while Bubba watches over the situation and only runs after them when there is a "good shot" of catching one (in his mind....they have absolutely no chance of ever catching one!) It sure does wear them out, that is for sure....

Above I got a picture of one of the squirrels sitting on the stump of a limb. Below is a picture I captured last night around midnight of the results of Bubba and Skruffy's day. (And no, I did not pose them for this picture....just saw them laying there, both on their backs, sound asleep....)

In my last post I talked about how I cleaned the motor home's batteries. Since it was the first time I ever did it, I took a before picture, and hence, I might as well get a after picture too. The before was to show me exactly how all the cables were connected. I actually got pictures of the entire system, as shown below, but also of each individual battery and the cables connecting them. I then made a diagram which I really used to put them back together again. Basically, to tackle this type of job, as easy as it was, it is best to be prepared for getting it all back together again....

As you can see from the pictures above, the batteries were very dirty with area of the dreaded "white crap", officially known as Potassium Hydroxide, and mostly known as Alkaline Battery Corrosion. I prefer the "white crap" name, easier to say, and with my mother living 3,000 miles away, she is too far to wash my mouth out with soap for saying "Crap". (Which is the same as the Greek word "skata"....but I know I will be seeing mom in a few months, so I don't want to go there.....)

Around the group of four 6 volt batteries is metal battery holder which originally had a rubber coating on it. Some of this coating had fallen off, so I had to remove all the loose coating, clean up the white crap which was growing on the exposed metal, and then re-coat the metal. The quickest, cheapest way to re-coat was to wrap up the entire metal with a real good thick electrical tape, and for that job, it takes a Gorilla....

Below you can see the finished product. I checked each battery with a Battery Hydrometer, added distilled water to each cell, and cleaned up all the posts and the connectors and the outside of the batteries. I also cleaned up the area that the batteries sit on, and the surrounding walls and supports. It took around 5 hours, but worth every minute of it.

I am just glad that I did not wait any longer. New batteries like the ones we have run around $100 each. Good Trojan AGM Batteries run around $250 each, more if you have to have the shipped to you. I think these batteries will last another few years...of course, by the time they do need to be replaced, the price will probably be 25% more than they are now.